GUESSING AT THE CONSEQUENCES OF DONALD TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY Stunning as Trump’s upset (and upsetting) capture of the White House was, prognosticators swung into immediate speculation about what it would mean for science and medicine. Note

Photo above Credit: jennfarr/Flickr via Pacific Standard DATA (LACK OF IT) AT THE SUPREME COURT When the US Supreme Court announced its 5-3 decision on Monday knocking down the Texas law that would have

WILL DARAPRIM DISPUTE TOPPLE DRUG PRICES? Will the rage over Martin Shkreli’s extortionate overpricing of the old reliable toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim trigger a rebellion over the cost of our medicines? That’s what Dan Diamond argues

IMMUNOTHERAPY FOR JIMMY CARTER’S CANCER The immunotherapy Jimmy Carter is getting in addition to radiation for the metastisized melanoma that has invaded his brain and liver is startlingly effective in some patients and not at

Eat chocolate! Lose weight! Lie to everybody! The first response to journalist John Bohannon’s latest sting operation against schlock science journals and schlock science journalists–publishing a paper claiming that a chocolate bar a day helps

Hacking Planet Earth Blogger responses to the National Academy of Sciences’ two voluminous new reports on geoengineering–the reports want to change that name to “climate intervention,” but what it means is hacking the Earth

Lab safety is even worse than you thought The best single blog source for keeping up with the current smallpox-anthrax-flu-lab safety fiasco is Maryn McKenna’s Superbug, one of the Wired blogs. Some recent posts: About

Coal black At Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait says President Obama’s proposed new plan for slowing down atmospheric carbon dioxide by reducing coal use for generating electricity is huge. But is it huge? As a

The National Climate Assessment You probably know that the White House issued the massive National Climate Assessment early this week. I’ll get to details and more links to comments in a moment, but if